Quentin Tarantino On ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’: ‘They’re Going Out Of Their Way To F— Me’
Quentin Tarantino isn’t holding back when it comes to Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Disney/LucasFilm. Tarantino, whose film The Hateful Eight is opening in the same month as Star Wars: The Force Awakens, went on The Howard Stern Show to blast Disney and Star Wars.
It’s not just the issue of having his release drop is around the same time as Star Wars: The Force Awakens. According to Tarantino, his special 70mm version of The Hateful Eight is being pushed out of LA’s prestigious Cinerama Dome in favor of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Quentin Tarantino accuses Disney of “extortion” over #StarWars booking https://t.co/LgEJHBjMEW pic.twitter.com/IPxr0EvlBZ
— Variety (@Variety) December 16, 2015
Tarantino said that originally ArcLight Cinemas told Disney that they would honor their commitment to Tarantino and The Hateful Eight, Disney allegedly threatened to pull Star Wars: The Force Awakens from all of the ArcLight locations, which would mean it would be a massive loss. This was under the condition that there would be room to show Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
According to the director, he learned about this upsetting news on Monday and has been fuming about it ever since.
“It was real bad news and it really f—ing pissed me off and I think I want to voice it right now. Basically, and I’m not talking about the whole country, I’m talking about one theater in particular. We were gonna play at the Cinerama Dome on the 25th, we were gonna open there and play there exclusively for two weeks and Star Wars was gonna play the two weeks before us.”
He continued, “They’ve got the biggest movie in the world. We’re talking about one effing theater. They are going out of their way to f–k me.”
It’s safe to say that Quentin Tarantino may not enjoy ‘Star Wars’ as much as we did: https://t.co/mMqY3Esgtn pic.twitter.com/QGim5v6dVR
— The Film Stage (@TheFilmStage) December 16, 2015
According to Deadline, this is a sensitive subject for Tarantino given how close he is to the Cinerama. According to the report, “the Cinerama logo appears in the opening credits of The Hateful Eight.”
Additionally, when the famed director spoke to Deadline at the premiere at the Cinerama about the role the venue has had in making his film The Hateful Eight, he said, “I made The Hateful Eight for the Dome… This is the first time seeing it at the Dome for me too, and it was like I hadn’t even seen it before, not like this.”
In his interview with Howard Stern, Tarantino goes on to say that what Disney is doing to him is extortion. He also went back into his past work and stated that he made the corporation a ton of money. Back when Disney owned Miramax, Tarantino’s films Pulp Fiction, the Kill Bill sagas, and Jackie Brown came out through that banner. Combined, these films made an estimated $580 million for Disney and Miramax.
This year is unique in that a lot of “Oscar films” that should be released earlier in the quarter are actually being released around the same time in December. For instance, Concussion, Joy, The Hateful Eight, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens are all opening within a week or two of each other. These are just some of the hyped up movies thanks to the Oscar season.
Tarantino, who usually releases his films around Christmas Day, notes that it’s hard to juggle for screen time given all the releases that are dropping.
“The real problem is that it’s too packed and it’s hard to juggle all these films and we are telling them (the studios) that’s there are too many movies to juggle right now.”
What do you think about Quentin Tarantino’s comments?
[Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images]
